Author: University of Virginia

From civil rights activists across the political spectrum to Henry Ford, many Americans have believed that folk music communicates purer value than music created by commercial interests. Associate Professor of Music Richard Will examines efforts to change the country with folk music.

U.Va. alumni return to grounds for Reunion Weekend. Speaking at Saturday’s event on the Lawn were President Casteen, Tom Faulders, Bob Sweeney and Ronde Barber.

It has been twenty-five years since the Class of 1982 entered the world. Members of the class share their stories about how they followed their passions, and what they plan to do next.
Panelists are: David Lane, Gates Foundation; Scott Safon, CNN; Rozanne Olitzsky Worrell, online columnist; Pedro Medina, Yo Creo en Colombia Foundation; Pattie Sellers, Fortune Magazine, moderator.

Over the last 20 years, Southerners have erected dozens of monuments and memorials to the people and events of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Dell Upton, U.Va David A Harrison III Professor of Historical Archeology and Architecture, looks at a handful of the most contentious of the monuments.

To function, the brain requires a highly complex wiring pattern that develops during our early fetal stages but continues to be somewhat remodeled as we age. U.Va Associate Professor of Biology and Director of the Neuroscience Program Barry Condron explains how brain patterns form and change.

Novelist John Grisham delivered the 2007 Commencement Address at the University of Virginia.

Boyd Tinsley, a Charlottesville native and acclaimed violinist with the Dave Matthews Band, addresses the 2007 Valedictory Exercises at the University of Virginia.

What role did the Chinese have in the development of cannon? In this edition of Technology in World History, Bernard Carlson, Professor of Science, Technology and Society at the University of Virginia, examines the development of this technology of warfare.

Dr. Glen Elder, Howard W. Odum Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Research Professor of Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, describes how World War II affected an entire generation of men. His remarks are followed by a discussion on aging by Steven Nock, Commonwealth Professor of Sociology at U.Va.

Lecture by Sister Helen Prejean, CSJ, who has long had a ministry to death row inmates in Louisiana and who received international acclaim for her book “Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in the US” (1993) which was made into a major motion picture starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn. She is also the author of “The Death of Innocents: An Eye Witness Account of Wrongful Executions” (2004).

Recognizing her extensive work in engineering consulting services and her lifelong commitment to encouraging women to pursue engineering, the University of Virginia Women’s Center presents its 2007 Distinguished Alumna Award to Jill S. Tietjen. Tietjen is a 1976 graduate of U.Va.’s School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) who also majored in applied mathematics and earned an M.B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Rebecca W. Rimel, President and CEO of The Pew Charitable Trusts, delivers the University of Virginia School of Nursing’s annual Catherine Strader McGehee Memorial Lecture in McLeod Hall Auditorium. Rimel is a graduate of the nursing school and a former faculty member of the UVA Department of Neurosurgery.